Darkenbloom Shortlisted for the 2025 Schlegel-Tieck Prize

A panoramic novel of European history, by an internationally bestselling writer.

The whole truth, as the name implies, is the collective knowledge of all those involved. Which is why you can never piece it together again properly afterwards. Because a few of those who possessed a part of it are always already dead. Or lying, or their memories are bad.

It’s 1989, and in a small town on the Austria–Hungary border, nobody talks about the war; the older residents pretend not to remember, and the younger ones are too busy making plans to leave. The walls are thin, the curtains twitch, there is a face at every window, and everyone knows what they are not supposed to say.

But as thousands of East German refugees mass at the border, it seems that the past is knocking on Darkenbloom’s door.

Still, though, nobody talks about the war.

Until a mysterious visitor shows up asking questions.

Until townspeople start receiving threatening letters and even disappearing.

Until a body is found.

Darkenbloom is a sweeping novel of exiled counts, Nazis-turned-Soviet-enforcers, secret marriages, mislabelled graves, remembrance, guilt, and the devastating power of silence, by one of Austria’s most significant contemporary writers.